Lorraine Jenifer Daston (born June 9, 1951) is an American historian of science and philosopher. She is director emerita of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG) in Berlin, visiting professor in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago, and an authority on early modern Europe's scientific and intellectual history. In 1993, she was named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is a permanent fellow at the Berlin Institute for Advanced Study,Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, "The Permanent Fellows ", Lorraine J. Daston, July 12, 2018 and was elected to the Academia Europaea in 2025.

Early life and education Daston was born in 1951 in East Lansing, Michigan, to parents of Greek heritage, who named her for the muse Urania. Her father was attending Michigan State University and soon became a professor of psychology. Daston earned her BA from Harvard University in 1973, summa cum laude, after studying a variety of subjects including both science and the history of science. She then went on to earn a diploma in history and philosophy of science from the University of Cambridge in 1974.

Daston earned a PhD from Harvard University in the history of science under the direction of I. Bernard Cohen and Erwin N. Hiebert, with the thesis The Reasonable Calculus: Classical Probability Theory 1650-1840. She then spent time as a postdoctoral junior fellow at Columbia University's Society of Fellows before returning to Harvard for her first professorial position.

Career Daston began her professorial career as an assistant professor at Harvard University (1980–1983), during which time she participated in the Center for Interdisciplinary Research, Bielefeld program "The Probabilistic Revolution" organized by Lorenz Krüger, Ian Hacking, and Nancy Cartwright 1982–1983. There she met her husband-to-be Gerd Gigerenzer and began a complex series of professional moves to handle their academic two-body problem. Her positions included Princeton University (1983–1986), the Dibner Chair at Brandeis University (1986–1990), a professor and director role at the University of Göttingen (1990–1992), a professorship at the University of Chicago (1992–1997), and finally directorship and membership at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (1995–). While at the Max Planck Institute, she also returned to visiting professorships at Harvard University and the University of Chicago and has held a place on the University of Chicago Committee on Social Thought.

In 2002, she delivered two Tanner Lectures at Harvard University, in which she traced theoretical conceptions of nature in several literary and philosophical works. In 2006, she gave the British Academy's Master-Mind Lecture. Daston was appointed the inaugural Humanitas Visiting Professor in the History of Ideas at the University of Oxford for 2012–2013. She has also served as Oxford's Isaiah Berlin Lecturer in the History of Ideas April–May 1999.

Daston has been awarded two Pfizer Awards from the History of Science Society, in 1989 for her 1988 book Classical Probability in the Enlightenment and again in 1999 for her 1998 book with Katharine Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150-1750. Daston was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2010. She won the 2012 George Sarton Medal for lifetime achievement in the history of science. She was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Princeton University in 2013. She was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2017. In 2018, she received the Dan David Prize. In the Fall of 2019, Daston was a Fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in Uppsala, Sweden. She is currently a member of the Academic Senate at the same institute. In 2024 she was awarded the Balzan Prize for "History of Modern and Contemporary Science".Balzan Prize 2024

She is on the editorial board of Critical Inquiry. She is a contributor to the London Review of Books.

Personal life Daston married the German psychologist and social scientist Gerd Gigerenzer, with whom she has a daughter.

Selected bibliography Monographs Rivals: How Scientists Learned to Cooperate, Columbia Global Reports 2023, . Rules: A Short History of What We Live By, Princeton University Press 2022, . Against Nature, MIT Press 2019, . with Peter Galison: Objectivity, Zone Books 2007, . Wunder, Beweise und Tatsachen: zur Geschichte der Rationalität, Fischer Verlag 2001, . Eine kurze Geschichte der wissenschaftlichen Aufmerksamkeit, Siemens-Stiftung 2001. K10plus PPN 1162291753. with Katharine Park: Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150–1750, Zone Books 1998, . Classical Probability in the Enlightenment, Princeton University Press 1988, .

As editor

Science in the Archives: Pasts, Presents, Futures, University of Chicago Press 2017, . with Elizabeth Lunbeck: Histories of Scientific Observation, University of Chicago Press 2011, . with Michael Stolleis: Natural Law and Laws of Nature in Early Modern Europe, Ashgate 2008, . with Katharine Park: The Cambridge History of Science, Vol. 3: Early Modern Science, Cambridge University Press 2006, . Things that Talk: Object Lessons from Art and Science, Zone Books 2004, . with Fernando Vidal: The Moral Authority of Nature, University of Chicago Press 2003, . Biographies of Scientific Objects, University of Chicago Press 2000, . with Lorenz Krüger and Michael Heidelberger: The Probabilistic Revolution, Vol. 1: Ideas in History, MIT Press 1987, .

Articles

with Moritz Stefaner & Jen Christiansen: "The language of science". 175 Years of Discovery. Scientific American. 323 (3): 2020, 24–31. "Before the Two Cultures: Big Science and Big Humanities in the Nineteenth Century". Proceedings of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. IX (1): 2015. brief description, Bookstore, Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities "The Disciplines of Attention," in David E. Wellbery, ed., A New History of German Literature, Harvard University Press Reference Library, 2005. "The Morality of Natural Orders: The Power of Medea" and "Nature's Customs versus Nature's Laws". Tanner Lectures at Harvard University, 2002. "The Ideal and Reality of the Republic of Letters in the Enlightenment". Science in Context. 4 (2): 1991, pp. 367–386. "Degrees of Wrinkledness". London Review of Books, 46 (21). [A review of the book Disputed Inheritance: The Battle over Mendel and the Future of Biology by Gregory Radick, The University of Chicago Press, 2023.]

References

External links Lorraine Daston Max Planck IWG profile page Lorraine Daston John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought profile page The Observer (Article about Daston in MaxPlanckResearch, magazine of the Max Planck Society 2012

"Rules Rule: How Enlightenment Reason Became Cold War Rationality" (Video of Lecture at Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, 2010) "Condorcet and the Meaning of Enlightenment" (Lecture at McGill University, 2006)